Giggs' Top 100 albums - 2008 edition
Giggsalot ranks his Top 100 albums as of 2008. He began work on this project in July of 2008 and continues to work on it today, as he is a slow bastard. And though he would like to claim that is mostly due to his busy social life, in reality that is a half-truth at best. 100. Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon Year: 1973 Genre: Progressive Rock # Speak To Me / Breathe (3:58) # On The Run (3:35) # Time (6:53) http://media.putfile.com/Time-15 # The Great Gig in the Sky (4:15) # Money (6:30) # Us and Them (7:34) # Any Colour You Like (3:24) # Brain Damage (3:50) # Eclipse (1:45) --- And you run and you run, to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking... Man, I really can't be arsed writing tonight. I woke up in Italy eighteen and a half hours ago and have done nothing even slightly productive since I got back. I really should be going to bed instead of complaining about this. Maybe that's what Time is on about. Probably not. Whatever. I feel like writing a few big Yahtzee-esque run-on sentences and leaving it at that. Here goes. Dark Side of the Moon is really iconic and stuff and for the most part it holds up well compared to similar albums from it's time from bands like Yes and Rush which everyone with half a musical brain knew were bollocks from the start but I digress. I've never made any secrets with the fact that I preferred Wish You Were Here and even now as I look back a bit that's still quite substantially better and probably the Pink Floyd album that's actually fallen in my estimations the least, which is all the more impressive if you think about the fact that it had the largest potential distance to fall in the first place. But Dark Side is definitely their most cohesive, singular effort, and while Money is neither the classic nor the steamin crock of album-ruining bull**** it is proclaimed by nearly everyone, Time does stand up to it's reputation and the closing trilogy is still pretty sweet too. But Breathe is boring. Breathe will always be boring. Don't even try to convince me otherwise. 99. Reverend Bizarre - In The Rectory Of The Bizarre Reverend Year: 2002 Genre: Trad. Doom Metal # Burn In Hell! (8:52) # In The Rectory (13:10) # The Hour Of Death (11:49) # Sodoma Sunrise (13:29) # Doomsower (5:37) http://media.putfile.com/Doomsower # Cirith Ungol (21:10) --- Ah, a trad. doom album. Better bring out the checklist then. :- Singer attempts to sound like Ozzy Osbourne. Y/N :- Riffs ever-so-slight variations on Iommi's material circa 1971. Y/N :- Patently ridiculous album cover. Y/N :- Oh-so-subtle homage to idols in album title/song names. Y/N :- Shockingly poor lyrics detailing the downfall of man to the army of Satan. Y/N Optional: :- If band is not native English speakers, said lyrics must also either make very, very little grammatical sense or sound like the could have come out the mind of a particularly morbid four year old. - Drummer apes Bill Ward's style of moving entirely in time with guitar part completely Y/N :- Drummer apes Bill Ward's style of moving entirely in time with guitar part completely. Y/N :- "Epic" album closer named after prominent Middle Earth landmark. Y/N :- Song called Sodoma Sunrise. Y/N And this, coming from one of the bigger names in the scene, doesn't look too pretty really. The surprising thing is that In The Rectory is totally awesome. Yes, there's no originality here whatsoever and someone who doesn't have a soft spot for being bowled over by heavy riffs or a sense of humour (read: high pain threshold) when it comes to awful lyrics will find approximately nothing of value here. But for those of us that do, it's a guilty pleasure that seems so acclaimed wherever you look that it really isn't as guilty as you'd think. On the lyrical front, The Hour Of Death is the only track that makes me cringe slightly at the sheer cheese of it, and even that is a shame as it certainly is one of the more interesting songs musically on In The Rectory. It just so happens that a ten minute lyrically-focused epic which's plot arc boils down to "everyone is being killed...oh no please kill me and not my loved one..oh balls, she's dead. i wish i was too" is not so poetically composed in the hands of a band who think a rousing climax can be achieved with the lines: I hope you burn in hell Because you're an evil man Your heart belongs to the Devil When will you understand (Though the final declaration of You bastard! in that song as the music comes crashing to a halt gets a laugh from me every time.) While we're criticising, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there are a few moments seemingly lifted directly from Black Sabbath songs; the uptempo section in the annoyingly good Sodoma Sunrise (surely one of the words titles ever concieved, by the way) is literally a slab of a Black Sabbath song I can't quite place (Supernaut?) shoved right in there. It sounds awesome, of course. But that's probably because the original song is awesome, rather than any compositional genius of Reverend Bizarre. But really, when it comes down to it, there's nothing here that isn't very, very good at what it does. For a 74 minute album of dirge-paced riffs, it lags amazingly little, and stays more consistently interesting than anyone (including I) would reasonably expect. And for the twenty minute closer Cirith Ungol to be the best of the lot, while carrying a verse-bridge-verse-bridge structure for it's first 12 minutes, perplexes me greatly. I imagine the superb organ-led ending might have something to do with it; in any case, it's pretty great. As is the whole package, shockingly derivative as it is. And in a funny turn of events, it might just be better than any single Black Sabbath album. Funny that. 98. Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space Year: 1997 Genre: Space Rock # Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (3:40) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1ohmSeQELw) # Come Together (4:40) # I Think I'm in Love (8:09) # All of My Thoughts (4:36) # Stay With Me (5:08) # Electricity (3:46) # Home of the Brave (2:22) # The Individual (4:15) # Broken Heart (6:38) # No God Only Religion (4:21) # Cool Waves (5:05) # Cop Shoot Cop... (17:13) --- All I need in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away... I really can't shake the feeling with this album that at one point in my life or another it'll mean an awful lot to me. Oddly enough though for now it's just "good" without me really knowing why I like it so much. A bit like tranny for Dark Side actually. In any case, it leaves me with not a lot to say. Adios. 97. Sigur Rós - ( ) Year: 2002 Genre: Post-Rock # Untitled 1 (Vaka) (6:38) # Untitled 2 (Fyrsta) (7:34) # Untitled 3 (Samskeyti) (6:38) # Untitled 4 (Njósnavélin) (7:33) (http://media.putfile.com/Njosnavelin-19) # Untitled 5 (Alafoss) (9:57) # Untitled 6 (E-Bow) (8:49) # Untitled 7 (Dauðalagið) (13:00) # Untitled 8 (Popplagið) (11:45) --- Somewhat like Dark Side, ( ) is another album I like for it's atmosphere and pacing rather than particular songs. And ( ) is an incredibly stylised album, far more so than any of Sigur Rós' other works, to the extent where upon it's release you could hardly hear the generally positive reviews over the massive cries that this was the most pretentious album to ever set metaphorical foot on this planet. And it wasn't entirely unjustified, looking at the facts. This is an untitled album, commonly known as a pattern found not even on the cover but the plastic sleeve slid over it. All eight tracks found within are also untitled and no reference to a tracklisting is found anywhere on the retailed product whatsoever. The actual CD is plain white, and the liner notes consist of eight pages (one for each track) of blank, near transparent paper, supposedly for the listener to sketch their interpretation of each piece onto to personalise the product. And that's not mentioning the fact that the entirity of the lyrics on the album are sung in an invented, completely phonetic language christened "Hopelandic" by the band. Or the fact that the fifth of the eight untitled tracks has a thirty second silence preceding it to ensure that the album is split even more obviously into it's two stylistic halves. So yeah, it's fair to say Sigur Ros went out their way to present ( ) in an incredibly vague way, presumably in the hope of letting the music speak for itself. And in one way it does. But in my opinion, it works differently, only serving to reinforce the intimate, glacial feel of the packaging in musical form. No song illustrates this better than the opener, known as Vaka (I'll be using the song's informal titles from here on to just make things easier). How a song can sound as fragile as Vaka does I have honestly no idea. Vaka is a man wrapped up in furs in a blizzard, the last embers of his campfire giving way to the wind, frantically rubbing his hands together to stay warm. It is a pane of glass, precariously balanced on a rough-hewn, all-too-narrow wooden platform. Seemingly entirely at the mercy of some unknown force, it threatens to fall and shatter painlessly into a million pieces, never to be heard from again. Vaka never does die that death, and does make it to a relatively peaceful end. But it brings no joy; it never suggests that this horrible fragility has been fixed in any way, if we listen to Vaka again in fifteen minutes it will evoke the same images, without resolution. Perhaps this is what Sigur Ros were going for. If not for the part the artwork and packaging plays, in the scene Vaka conjurs in my head upon every listen would never be as scarily vivid as it is. Perhaps it takes a piece of music so pretentiously presented to be able to generate as pretentious a description as I've just given it. Who knows. The album drifts along at the same beautiful, glacial dirge for another two tracks. Tto be quite honest, despite having listened to the album in the last hour to refresh my memory of it slightly, i can still recall absolutely nothing whatsoever about Fyrsta and the only thing I can remember about Samskeyti is that is features a piano ostinato of some kind. Don't ask me to describe it though. The same could be said for the fifth and sixth tracks on ( ), and the fact that over half the album drifts by would normally be a point for criticism. However, on this particular album it is almost a plus point: to be the weakest material on an incredibly atmospheric album and not detract from that atmosphere at all, or stand out negatively compared to the wondrous individual songs found on ( ) is as much as anyone could ask, I suspect. The album does pick up, however, (and it does need it; for all the weaker tracks are far from poor, an album made up entirely of them would approach mediocrity) with Njósnavélin, which after all I said about Vaka would probably be my pick for the album standout. It acts somewhat as a bridge between the first and second halves of the album, being the most driving of the first four tracks by quite a distance, yet still staying below the level of intensity which comes after it. For while ( ) is commonly percieved as an album of two distinct halves, light and heavy, the true upward shift in dynamic over the course of the album is far more gradual and subtle than that. No track after it quite evokes the fragile stillness of Vaka, and no track before the final two can come close to matching them for explosive power either. I would try and describe Njósnavélin, but I'd either end up lapsing into one of two extremes: the metaphor-heavy "let's not actually tell anyone what the song sounds like" approach or the technical "there is a piano fill at 5:37" approach, neither of which can quite describe the beauty contained within the song, so I'll pass and move on, especially since I handily provided a link to it above anyway. I reckon I just got out of jail free there! The second half of ( ) doesn't actually start out as louder or more driving than the first. If anything, the one thing that is immediately noticable is that the soundscapes are just far more dense, the backdrops to Jónsi's angelic vocals are more knowingly mournful than the niave melancholic feel of much of the opening half. It is only in the final parts of the four songs on the second half that the dynamic changes are truly felt. Every one builds up to a feedback-ridden, cathartic post-rock style climax, each more powerful and cleansing than the last. I think I've got to the part where I need to talk about Popplagið. And when talking about ( ), it's kind of a necessity. Rarely does a song provide context to a whole album while eclipsing the majority of it to the point of ridicule as much as Popplagið does at the end of ( ). Within it’s first six or so minutes, Popplagið doesn’t particularly distinguish itself from the songs before it, particularly the immediately preceding Dauðalagið, which features throughout an even more driving drumbeat at it’s heart. This is not to say it does not kick into gear until later or anything (as I’ve discussed, not standing out on ( ) is rarely a bad thing), and the beginning section is certainly more perfectly conceived than anything on the second half of the record, but after 59 minutes of not all that different material, it’s understandable that it takes something spectacular to bowl a listener over at this stage. And right at 6:06, it happens. Sigur Ros have a thing for making minor shifts in their music seem honestly shocking when they really shouldn’t be. The one in question is not really very differently done than in Svefn-g-englar from Agaetis Byrjun, and even occurs around the same time in the song. But as Popplagið emerges from the pounding drum break which follows it and finds itself in the midst of a seemingly never-ending, tense as hell build with Jonsi wailing like a particularly frightened disembodied banshee over the top, its impact is gut-wrenching. From there the song rolls on like a train which has truly lost control, (for proof check the drums: the vaguely jazzy beat from earlier is gone completely, replaced by sheer mayhem in an impressively rhythmic form) before capitulating right before it even begins to stop being exhilarating. You really didn’t expect it to wind down, did you? Pshh. Now if only they’d kept it at that and not crammed the same goddamn thing into six boring minutes of Glosoli. Can’t win ‘em all I guess. 96. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain Year: 1971 Genre: Funk/Soul # Maggot Brain (10:20) (http://media.putfile.com/Maggot-Brain-90) # Can You Get To That (2:50) # Hit It And Quit It (3:50) # Me And My Folks, You And Your Folks (3:37) # Super Stupid (3:57) # Back In Our Minds (2:39) # Wars Of Armageddon (9:43) --- Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time...for y'all have knocked her up And just like that begins both possibly the best "guitar track" of all time and the most timeless album of George Clinton's superb P-Funk era. History will probably record Maggot Brain as, while a great album, the title track "+ 6," and I can hardly argue. While the remainder of the album is a collection of pretty great and surprisingly varied pop-based funk songs (minus the frankly ridiculous closing jam Wars of Armageddon anyway...more on that later), it really does pale into slight insignificance when compared to the opener. Legend has it that George Clinton, right before the first and only take of Maggot Brain was recorded, told Eddie Hazel to play like he'd just found out his mother had died. If true, it's certainly drastic. But there aren't many songs (or as many people as mental as George Clinton, for that matter) that make such a ridiculous tale believable. For simply put, Maggot Brain is a colossal achievement in emotion and pain. After the short spoken word intro, Hazel's solo takes up the rest of the piece; not atypical to a jazz afficionado perhaps, but as the mission statement on a ****ing funk album for god's sake, it's fairly extraordinary. And as said, the rest of the songs do seem somewhat plain after that. But anything would. And in my opinion, almost every song that follows it would be considered strong material on any other soul or funk album of it's time. Ranging from the '67-esque psychadelic pop of Back In Our Minds to the genuinely Sabbath-rivalling riffs of Super Stupid, the material on here is brilliantly and unexpectedly eclectic, and in hindsight bombarding the listener with many different styles is as good a way to follow Maggot Brain as any. The pick of the bunch, though, is definitely the irresistable You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks, a ridiculously funky jaunt into almost Motown-esque territory, complete with a fully chanted chorus. The closer, the very modestly titled Wars Of Armageddon, actually nears the same length as Maggot Brain's epic title track, so it might be somewhat surprising for me to group it in with the short, arguably unfulfilling funk blasts of the middle of the record rather than standing with the opener. But what it comes down to is that while Maggot Brain goes nowhere for ten minutes with eloquence, grace and immense beauty, Wars Of Armageddon progresses to a similarly small extent while being an admittedly funky excuse for George Clinton to stick as many stupid sound effects over a song as humanely possible. And yes, that includes fart noises. It's incredibly frustrating, actually, because the song boasts some fine moments in it's growth into this vehicle for sonic chaos, and it compromises the song's (and album's) integrity somewhat in my view, robbing Maggot Brain of the awesome closer it deserves. But I suppose God works in mysterious ways, and if the same man who inspired Maggot Brain, basically defined a genre for nearly a decade, and looks like this (http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2005/011305/clinton.jpg) aged nearly 70 years old feels the need to put fart noises, car horns and people shouting "Power to the p*ssy!" in the closer of one of his group's most seminal albums... Well, who am I to argue? 95. Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place Year: 2003 Genre: Post-Rock # First Breath After Coma (9:33) # The Only Moment We Were Alone (10:14) # Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean (8:43) # Memorial (8:50) # Your Hand in Mine (8:17)(http://media.putfile.com/Your-Hand-In-Mine-98) --- To many people, a guilty pleasure would be Rihanna's Umbrella. Naturally, their taste is sophisticated, and for a pop song to evoke such feeling in them understandably leaves them slightly unnerved. The label guilty pleasure, a song you feel bad for liking, because it's clearly not good enough for your refined tastes, saves this wonderful man's ass on this occasion. However, Umbrella is not a guilty pleasure of mine. This is because I know fine well that it is an absolutely fantastic song and no matter how much Jay-Z pushes me in that direction by referring to himself as the "rain man" and uttering the abominable phrase, "In anticipation of precipitation," in the intro, my liking of the song never makes me feel bad in the slightest. The massively acclaimed band Explosions In The Sky however, is another matter. This is primarily because they are not very good. Whatsoever. Their albums other than this one are average at best, and though they do have a tendency for writing individually brilliant pieces of music (The Birth And Death Of The Day springs to mind immediately), the fact that so many budding post-rock bands have decided to shamelessly rip-off them rather than any of the genre's bands which are actually really good. In saying that, however, ones which do just that still don't tend to be that good; I'm looking at you, Yndi Halda. But I'm getting off-topic again. Where was I? Ah, yes. The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. One of only two albums (the other of which just missed the list) which can get to me on sheer prettiness. As a musician and songwriter myself, it'd be incredibly short sighted of me to denounce the good, old-fashioned melody, and it's clear than Explosions In The Sky have definite talent, albeit seemingly very sporadically, in that area. But every song on here sounds the exact same. There's not any instrument used other than guitar, bass and drums anywhere on the record. The songs all progress in the same linear format, and if a section of a piece on here appears to end without an overblown climax, rest assured that it will return later in the piece for just that. Above all, it's just so goddamn predictable it's unreal. But it's wonderful. As I said above, don't ask me to describe why I like this record: I can only reasonably describe why I really shouldn't. But the closer Your Hand In Mine might give the best indication. Around two and a half minutes in, the guitars meld into a single line of some of the most joyous, life affirming music I've ever heard, before spreading out again and beautifully harmonizing what remains of it, holding on to life by a thread. After two or so minutes, it fades away again, and the song continues. I mean, it's nowhere near as good from then on, as it goes on to reach it's not one, but two nice, predictable climaxes, but the aftershock from that part carries it through completely and utterly in my mind. And what's wrong with that? The band lets it happen throughout the record by keeping the sound so homogenised and singular. They let you pick and choose your favourite moments to hum over the next sections (and probably harmonize perfectly) until you find another nugget of gold to dwell on. And to be honest, it really comes to down to what you want from music. Most of the time, I want enjoyment. And when I sit down and decide to listen to The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, I know I'll go away feeling happier and more contended than I was when I originally sat down. And as I realised about a month ago, coming out of a few months of depression (not real depression, I should point out; just your typical teenage pathetic lethargic self-pity), there's really a scarily few amount of music that actually uplifts me. So to analyse why and ruin it would be a tragedy. So I listen to The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. And I don't give a **** why. 94. Crippled Black Phoenix - A Love Of Shared Disasters Year: 2007 Genre: Folk-Rock / Post-Rock # The Lament Of The Nithered Mercenary (2:33) # Really, How'd It Get This Way? (4:49) # The Whistler (9:45) # Suppose I Told The Truth (5:04) # When You're Gone (5:36) # Long Cold Summer (10:34) # Goodnight, Europe (6:09) # You Take The Devil Out Of Me (4:24) # The Northern Cobbler (7:33) # My Enemies I Fear Not, But Protect Me From My Friends (6:35) # I'm Almost Home (5:32) # Sharks & Storms / Blizzard Of Horned Cats (8:19) (http://media.putfile.com/Sharks--Storms) --- It's funny how I can have an album, even relatively low on this list, in such high company (in my own opinion, naturally), when I find nearly twenty minutes of it to bore me to tears. In fact, this is the only album in the list where I can say I skip any tracks on pretty much every listen. And when, in this case, that involves skipping the record's longest two songs, totalling just above twenty minutes between them, it's a hell of a stumbling block to an album. But A Love Of Shared Disasters copes with it better than most. One potential reason for this can be seen if you look at the artist. A supergroup with menbers from sources as wide ranging as Electric Wizard, Mogwai and Gonga, among others, Crippled Black Phoenix has no pretences at being a permanent project. Right from the beginning they called A Love Of Shared Disasters the first of a trilogy, which makes their decision to stock it up with 77 minutes of very eclectic music seem somewhat more reasonable. It also, for better or for worse, makes it an exceedingly song based album, and in the scenario of myself personally finding both The Whistler and Long Cold Summer to be skip-worthy, fruitless exercises in ambience which neither go anywhere nor are good enough to remain stationary and get away with it, this is probably the best type of album they could have made. It also doesn't hurt that the remaining 55 minutes or so of music is pretty much wonderful without exception. Touching on English style folk waltzes (Really, How'd It Get This Way?), indie rock numbers which sound paradoxically generic yet without peer (Suppose I Told The Truth, When You're Gone) and enchantingly beautiful chamber music (I'm Almost Home) along the way, the result is a truly versatile, unique album. The critics were left with no choice. They labelled it post-rock. ...Wait, what? It actually annoys me. I mean, yes. The superb, building closer Sharks and Storms/ Blizzard Of Horned Cats is a prime example of the genre. And you could easily make a case for The Northern Cobbler too, as while using them in a fairly unusual way, it utilizes many of the genre's cliches. But it ends there. Just because Goodnight, Europe has a climax doesn't make it post-rock, nor is The Whistler just cos it's instrumental and of extended length. Above all else, the tagging of this album as post-rock has made my list as it stands look like that of an ATPR fanatic: three post-rock albums in seven really won't do when I don't even particularly consider myself a fan of the genre. And I care about that sort of thing. Honest. 93. Cage - Hell's Winter Year: 2005 Genre: Alternative Rap # Good Morning (3:48) (http://media.putfile.com/Good-Morning-53) # Too Heavy for Cherubs (3:36) # Grand Ol' Party Crash (5:01) # The Death of Chris Palko (3:23) # Stripes (4:48) # Shoot Frank (4:22) # Scenester (3:50) # Perfect World (3:40) # Subtle Art of the Break Up Song (3:07) # Peeranoia (3:39) # Left It to Us (3:30) # Public Property (3:52) # Lord Have Mercy (3:24) # Hell's Winter (5:09) --- With her back against the wall, she still hears death singing in her... In my opinion a candidate for most under-rated rap album of all time, Cage's Hell's Winter came out to rave reviews. But due to the fact it was released on Definitive Jux between 2002 and 2006 and wasn't by Aesop Rock, no one really gave a crap. And yeah, Def Jux certainly didn't sustain their insanely awesome initial salvo of five records which were all awesome in their own way (three of which find themselves in this list) but the sophomore efforts of pretty much all the artists in question were all at least decent, yet seemed to get sweeped under the rug as soon as their positive reviews got pushed out of the "Best New Music" section on Pitchfork. Now I won't bore you with the story of Cage's background (though it's far from boring), but if this album seems to appeal to you at all, I implore you read about it here first: http://www.definitivejux.net/jukies/cage. Previously Cage had just been an angry, angry man on tape, using his horrific past to project misognistic graphically violent images. On Hell's Winter, his Def Jux debut, however, he finally seems to come to terms with his past, or at least learn to address and discuss it rather than use it as an excuse for generally acting like a dick. Which is a far bigger re-invention than it seems. Cage's lyrics on Hell's Winter are brilliant; on the serious tracks he projects vivid, dark, even sad images without needing to be offensive and overly graphic, on the more light hearted tracks, he's witty, original and, believe it or not, fairly sane. And the latter type of song doesn't just act as foil to the likes of Stripes and Shoot Frank, obviously the focal points of the record, but instead they mix and merge well together to make the album far more listenable and cohesive as a whole. Cage is also supplied with beats from the likes of DJ Shadow, RJD2, El-P and Blockhead. So it pretty much goes without saying Hell's Winter has no problems whatsoever in that regard, from Shadow's skittery staccato punches of Grand 'ol Party Crash to the Cold Vein-esque trip hop of the superb closing title track. Criticism? Well, if I must. The battle rap posse cut Left It To Us featuring what seems to be the entirety of the Def Jux roster (including Aes, who shows up temporarily and manages to mention "scummy ninjas" in the first line of his verse), good as it is, feels slightly out of place on a record as personal as this. And Grand 'ol Party Crash is probably the least subtle political song ever, going as far as to have no less than Jello Biafra imitating Dubya throughout, saying things like "I'll **** everything that moves." Now, you'll either find this genius or unbelievably crass, regardless of political belief, and I unfortunately veer slightly towards the latter. Aside from this, though, Hell's Winter is a unique and very worthwhile rap record, and if you consider yourself a fan of anything on Def Jux, you owe yourself to listen to this. R.I.P. Camu Tao (1977-2008) 92. Eluvium - Talk Amongst The Trees Year: 2005 Genre: Ambient / Drone # New Animals From the Air (10:47) # Show Us Our Homes (4:46) # Area 41 (0:58) # Everything to Come (5:40) # Calm of the Cast-Light Cloud (5:30) # Taken (16:56) (http://media.putfile.com/Taken-29) # We Say Goodbye to Ourselves (2:09) # One (7:44) --- The first of five ambient albums in the list (though that number could be both increased or lowered depending on what you define as ambient, of course), I really don't have a great deal to say about Talk Amongst The Trees. While it has none of the piano used wonderfully in Copia, it does do drone better than any other album in his discography, and feels far more unified as an album for it. The opener New Animals From The Air is one of the most brilliantly put together ambient pieces of music I've ever heard, and unlike with Explosions In The Sky, there has been genuine skill, master craftsmanship, and a big dollop of emotion put into it's construction. It's ebb and flow is otherworldly and the way Matthew Cooper takes out layers and brings them back in with a flourish when you never knew they were gone demonstrates not only an exceptionally musically refined mind, but one which understands the depth of focus of the human psyche and how to impact upon it. The closing One almost matches it in that regard, too, and the entire record is bathed in an aura of such serenity is it hard not to feel at peace when Talk Against The Trees plays. For while none of the shorter individual pieces which make up the remainder of the album are wonderful in their own right, they contribute immensely to the ambience of the album. Whether acting as segues between the longer tracks, or as fully fledged drones of their own, they're all beautiful, and none of them overstay their welcome or begin to grate in the slightest. And neither, slightly ridiculously, does the seventeen minute Taken, which, at it's core, essentially consists of an eight bar chord sequence played on guitar repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And over. But while this is surely a different type of mastery than that which created One, Matthew Cooper's ability to keep this single theme interesting is breathtaking. And it must be there, because it really doesn't get boring at all. And it seems to begin fading out just when it starts to. Now, it could just be a total coincedence that my attention span for repetition matches Cooper's. But I don't think it is. Don't ask me to explain it though. 91. Amon Tobin - Permutation Year: 1998 Genre: Drum And Bass / IDM # Like Regular Chickens (5:18) # Bridge (5:58) # Reanimator (6:36) # Sordid (7:13) (http://media.putfile.com/Sordid) # Nightlife (6:31) # Escape (5:56) # Switch (3:51) # People Like Frank (6:06) # Sultan Drops (5:14) # Fast Eddie (7:41) # Toys (5:18) # Nova (4:42) --- It's a bit of a travesty that Amon Tobin's best album just scraped onto this list; if the world were just and fair, this guy would undoubtedly have something top 25-worthy. The music he makes is so often absolutely unreal. There are only a few things that let him down. Firstly, he's without doubt slightly inconsistent and seems to have an inability to spot it. This, combined the fact that he only seemed to realize albums could be less than seventy minutes long upon the release of last year's generally excellent Foley Room, by which point the peak of his powers had probably passed, makes even his best albums pretty exhausting listens. But in saying that, his first three albums as well as the aforementioned Foley Room are all excellent and well worth picking up, and Permutation, the best of these, is good enough to be my 91st favourite album of all time. So it must have something going for it, right? As I mentioned, Amon Tobin is easily one of the most talented musicians to emerge within the last decade or so. I could spend about three paragraphs giving a summary of what he sounds like, and not begin to scratch the surface. Part Venetian Snares-esque breakbeat whore, part turntablist and sampling genius, a man with a passion for jazz growing up where tropicália was the norm, it's fair to say his influences are drawn from a wide range of places. And even within this album, it really shows. People Like Frank is like what DJ Shadow (circa 1994) would write if he got hooked on Mingus for a month, Nightlife sounds like the type of music they played in 1920's jazz clubs being punched in the face with creepy dark ambient dissonance and breakbeats every once in a while, and Sultan Drops adds probably the most eerie sounding eastern woodwind melody to the mix, just in case we didn't think the album was the soundtrack to a twisted nightmare already. The laid back closer Nova, meanwhile, manages to be arguably the freakiest thing on the whole album; after hearing over an hour of truly scary music, you're nearly twitching, waiting for the darkness to emerge and overpower you again. It takes a really messed up mind to sequence an album so well, yet so nastily. And don't even try and get to me to describe the likes of Sordid or Reanimator. They're like the aural equivalent of being pounded in the chest by a full force power-hose. Yet absolutely ****ing awesome. But in saying all that, you could take almost any three or four songs from this and not lose that much, while getting a far more digestable product. And as I said above, it's honestly a shame that this is as high as I can put this. Seventy-plus minute albums aren't necessarily exhausting, but pretty much by definition, Amon Tobin's music is. Category:Lists